Monday, June 20, 2011

Do you like this story?

Today we are going to use some of Luke's little dino friends to show you a fun math activity to do with your preschooler. This activity practices addition, subtraction and comprehension.

The great thing about this activity is that you use whatever you have on hand. My boys are dino lovers and we have enough to supply the whole neighborhood (haha) so they work perfectly for this activity.

We are also using this fun animal book of my baby girl's. When you open it up the animals inside pop out so your child can practice putting them back in.

We are going to use this cow but it is going to be a mud hole. What you do is role play a math problem with your child. Tell your child that they are in charge of moving the dinos (or whatever you use) whenever you talk about moving them in the story.

And the story goes like this...Once upon a time, there was a really cool mud hole. Four dinosaurs decided to go play in the mud hole. (this is when your child counts and moves 4 dinos over)

The 4 dinosaurs had so much fun playing in the mud hole that 2 more dinosaurs decided they wanted to come play in the mud hole too. (your child moves 2 more dinos to the mud hole).

How many dinosaurs are in the mud hole? (You child counts the dinosaurs and tells you there are 6 dinos in the mud hole.)

At this point you have your child re-tell you the story. Basically you are practicing their comprehension skills by re-telling you the addition problem. You want them to be able to tell you that 4 dinos went in the mud hole, then 2 more came over, and now there are 6 dinos.

I always use one more dino than is needed to throw them off a bit and to make them really count and think about what they are doing. That's why I used 7 in the above example.

This also works fabulous for practicing subtraction. This yellow duck below is going to be our yellow brick road.

Just repeat the story: Once upon a time there was a yellow brick road. It looked like so much fun to walk on that 6 dinosaurs decided to get on the yellow brick road.

Three of the dinosaurs got scared and decided to walk off of the yellow brick road.

How many dinosaurs are on the yellow brick road? And then have your child re-tell the story.

My kids have so much fun with this activity. I even let them take a turn making up stories and I take a turn moving the dinosaurs. They try to stump me by moving dinos back and forth several times and I have to try to remember it all to re-tell it back to them. LOL! Fun times!

We have fun thinking of things to use. The back cover of this book is a pond...

This sheep is a cloud...The possibilities are endless.

You could use little cars and draw a simple black race track on a piece of paper. Really, just be creative with what you have.

I hope you enjoy this activity as much as we do!!

This post was written by: Franklin Manuel

Franklin Manuel is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Twitter